Description

Beautifully situated up on a quiet mountain side with a great view of the surrounding landscape, Chatzouri offers everything from technical wall climbs to world class cave climbing, all within 5 to 15 min walk from the parking. The sectors all face east, getting sun in the morning and going into the shade from around 13.00 in the cave and 13-14.00 on the lower walls.
Conditions are best in the fall or the spring, but with shade most of the day combined with a breeze that often blows conditions can be good even in summer on all but the warmest days. In winter conditions can be anything from amazing to humid and wet all depending on the weather. The lower walls generally dry quickly, but some lines in the cave might seep a while after heavy rain.

Located between the ferry towns of Igoumenitsa and Patras and Leonidio/Kyparrisi it is a great destination to visit for any hard moving roadtriping climber aswell as the obvious "go to" testing ground for the aspiring local. The grades are in general stiff compared to the more visited areas around Leonidio, but for those not only seeking soft ticks the quality of the climbing in the cave especially is up there with the best crags in Greece.

The cave has a much larger amount of "routes" then it`s size would suggest because of the large amount of link-ups and variations. Add to this that many routes have fixed, often extended, draws, it can at times be a bit challenging to tell some of the lines apart, but that said, the more obvious and classic lines should be rather easy to spot despite this. Most routes are 100% natural, but a few artificial holds exists, this is marked on the lines in question.

History

The cave was in the early 2000`s the hardest crag in Greece with several historic firsts including the first 8b+ in Greece "Thia Diki" (2003) and a year later what was possible the first 8c "Pteranodus" (2004), both put up by by local legend Aristomenis Thanopoulos.
"Pteranodus" has to date no known repeats, thus the question mark surrounding it`s status as the first of the grade, but if the other routes of the crag is anything to go by it`s hard to imagine anyone finding anything here soft based on todays grading baring the discovery of some cheeky kneebars!

Routes on Chatzouri
56 sport 8 trad 1 Likes
341525+46a66b46c37a97b107c98a98b58c9a
Premium topo by Climb Greece
Henning Wang
from Trondheim